This isn’t Shoegaze so much as Chillwave, but it’s Shoegaze adjacent and reminiscent of something like Mallory: Charlotte Hatherley covering Peter Schickele’s “Rejoice in the Sun” from the soundtrack to Silent Running.
For comparison, here’s the original from the closing credits:
Silent Running is still tree-hugging space hippie bullshit, and I’ve always found something off-putting Joan Baez’s voice (maybe the excessive vibrato?), but I’ve got a soft spot for this song.
Let’s continue yesterday’s giant spider horror theme with a look at some recent video games.
First up: Cassiculus, a game where you face giant spiders underground.
Next up: Daz Games plays Jawbone Hollow, where you face… a giant spider underground.
Finally, Daz also tackles giant spiders in Huntsman, where you face a giant spider…in an office building! This one may have the most realistic spider of all of them.
Sweet dreams, arachnophobs…
We’ve previously featured some giant movie spiders. How about a (theoretically) real life giant spider?
Meet the J’ba Fofi.
The J’ba FoFi, also known as the Congolese Giant Spiders, are a type of large arachnid cryptid which is said to inhabit the forests of the Congo, possibly representing a new species of Arachnida.
Most of the many anecdotal tales describe the spiders digging a shallow tunnel under tree roots and camouflaging it with a large screen of leaves. Then they create an almost invisible web between their burrow and a nearby tree, stringing the whole area with a network of trip lines. Some oblivious animal, that’s likely soon to end up on the creature’s menu, will trip the line alerting the spider. The victim will then be chased into the web. This type of predatory behavior is similar to that of several species of trap-door spider.
Natives claim the J’ba FoFi eggs are a pale yellow-white and shaped like peanuts, and the hatchlings are bright yellow with a purple abdomen. Their coloration becomes darker and brown as they mature. Some of the peoples indigenous to the regions in the Congo where the J’ba FoFi has been seen assert that the spider was once quite common, but has since become very rare. Possibly indicating the species has become endangered due to deforestation.
The fullest account by Westerners appears in a cryptozoological book by George Eberhart. On page 204, Eberhart relates the terrifying experience of an English couple traveling through a region of jungle in what is now called the Congo: “R.K. Lloyd and his wife were motoring in the Belgian Congo in 1938 when they saw a large object crossing the trail in front of them. At first, they thought it was a cat or a monkey, but they soon realized it was a spider with legs nearly 3 feet.”
Cryptozoologist William J. Gibbons has hunted for what some think may be a living Congolese dinosaur called Mokele-mbembe. On his third expedition in search of the creature he came upon natives who related their experiences with giant spiders. He shared his experience with readers upon his return to Canada:
“On this third expedition to Equatorial Africa, I took the opportunity to inquire if the pygmies knew of such a giant spider, and indeed they did! They speak of the J’ba FoFi, which is a “giant” or “great spider.” They described a spider that is generally brown in color with a purple mark on the abdomen. They grow to quite an enormous size with a leg span of at least five feet. The giant arachnids weave together a lair made of leaves similar in shape to a traditional pygmy hut, and spin a circular web (said to be very strong) between two trees with a strand stretched across a game trail.”
“These giant ground-dwelling spiders prey on the diminutive forest antelope, birds, and other small game, and are said to be extremely dangerous, not to mention highly venomous,” Gibbons states. “The spiders are said to lay white, peanut-sized eggs in a cluster, and the pygmies give them a wide berth when encountered, but have killed them in the past. The giant spiders were once very common but are now a rare sight.”
Supposedly someone captured footage of a J’ba Fofi in Mozambique in 2014. Look to the right side of this video:
Amazingly vague footage, is it not?
I think a spider of that size unlikely, but more likely than Mokele-mbembe.
But I don’t think I’ll be vacationing in the Congolese jungle any time soon…
To kick off the Halloween season, here’s Kevin Pollack on the Rich Eisen show talking about greeting Trick-or-Treaters as Christopher Walken:
“Which one of you little freaks can guess what I’ve buried under the house?”
Good times, good times…
Another signed/limited edition bought at a bargain price.
Niven, Larry. The Time of the Warlock. SteelDragon Press, 1984. First edition hardback, #185 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine, Mylar-protected dust jacket. Includes all of The Magic Goes Away and additional stories set in the same universe. Supplements an unsigned copy. Chalker/Owings, page 418. Bought off eBay for $23.50, less than the original limited edition list price of $30.
I manage to fill one of the few gaps left in my Jack Vance collection.
Vance, Jack. Bad Ronald. Underwood Miller, 1982. First hardback edition, #63 of 200 signed, numbered copies, a Fine- copy with a very small bump to top rear boards, in a Near Fine dust jacket with slight age darkening to top of spine, and a trace of same along edges. Suspense novel originally published as a paperback original under his legal name of John Holbrook Vance, and the basis of a well-regarded 1974 TV movie of the same name. Hewett, A.43.c. Cunningham, 5.b. Chalker/Owings, page 434. Hubin, page 404. Supplements copies of the text in Volume 12 of the Vance Integral Edition and the Subterranean Dangerous Ways omnibus (which I have both lettered and trade states of), but I still lack the 1973 Ballantine PBO. Though overgraded as Fine/Fine, I can’t really complain since I bought this at a bargain $35 price.
The 50th Anniversary edition of the Genesis prog rock masterpiece The Lamb lies Down on Broadway just dropped. Were I not between jobs for an unreasonably long period of time, I would no doubt plop down my $120 or so bucks.
Here’s the remastered title track.
And here’s Classic Album Review for What It All Means:
The usual metaphoric analysis caveats apply…
Here’s a new Ted Chiang limited edition from Subterranean:
Chiang, Ted. Story of Your Life. Subterranean Press, 2025. First edition hardback, #212 of 500 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine slipcase, sans dust jacket, as issued, in publisher’s resealable bag. Chiang’s Nebula-winning novella about attempts to communicate with aliens who don’t perceive time as linear, and the basis of the 2016 movie Arrival. The number matches the number of my Subterranean edition of Exhalation. I also own an inscribed first of Stories of Your Life, his first short story collection, which contains this. Lots of people love this novella, but I don’t like it nearly as much as “Understand” or “Hell is the Absence of God” (also contained there). Bought from the publisher at the usual discount.
I will have cone copy of this available for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog, which will probably be out late November.
This was sent to me as a friend of the press:
Swanwick, Michael. Life: A User’s Manual. Dragonstairs Press, 2025. First edition chapbook original, #6 of 40 signed, numbered copies produced for Confluence 2025, a Fine copy, with tiny additional chapbook inscribed “for a friend of the Press” laid in. Vignettes on the stages of life.
This sketch comedy TV show from 1979 features what is probably the first ever TV appearance of Spinal Tap. I was planning to post this right before Spinal Tap II: The End Continues came out, but I got distracted by shiny objects and the movie came out last week.
Alas, the sequel seems to have done very poorly at the box office, so I might just have to wait for it on DVD…